This article first appeared in THE SUNDAY INDEPENDENT

16th March 2008

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The 2008 FNB Dance Umbrella has come to an end, after a month of contrasting performances that demonstrated the rich imaginative seam running through the bedrock of South African dance.

The Gala Evening at the University of Johannesburg Arts Centre was an appropriately celebratory event, with performances of various works that have been staged at the Umbrella during its twenty-year existence.

A highlight was Gregory Maqoma and Shanell Winlock in Southern Comfort (2001), mocking the pretention that so often accompanies their art form: Maqoma began with a grand speech but was interrupted by Winlock’s “Shut up and dance!”, while her bossy and self-involved character was in turn teased by the dissenting musical trio of Bongani Kunene, Given Mphago and Isaac Molelekoa. The dancing fizzed with an electric energy complemented by the crackling sound of the bubble wrap on which both dancers and musicians moved.

This was preceded by Susan Abraham’s more sombre Bloodsport, a portrayal of abusive relationships that hasn’t dated since it debuted fifteen years ago (although Andre Abrahamse’s original music hints at its roots in early 90s rock). Moeketsi Koena’s rigid solo piece Solve 4 X baffled some audience members and delighted others; the six dancers who put on an adapted version of Neville Campbell’s Pride turned the stage into a scene of animalistic, territorial conflict and compromise; and the evening was rounded off by an exhilarating rendition of Alfred Hinkel’s Last Dance (Bolero) by an ensemble from the Jazzart Dance Theatre. Last weekend there was also a Gala Night celebrating the proud thirty-year history of the Moving Into Dance Mophatong (MIDM) Performance Company.

One of the high-profile premieres at this year’s Umbrella was Back, choreographed by P.J. Sabbagha and performed by Dada Masilo and Lulu Mlangeni. Sabbagha and Masilo have become something of a “poster couple” for South African dance, and the scrum for spare tickets outside the Wits Downstairs Theatre on Saturday night was evidence of their popularity. The show rather ambitiously billed itself as “something about love, loss, memory, desire, intimacy, jealousy, belonging and isolation” and the waffling blurb (“Back is an exploration of the subtle and dynamic fluidity of immediacy ...”) was irksome but, when Winlock’s advice to “shut up and dance” was heeded, the striking visuals and the brooding intensity of the dancers proved to be a much more effective means of communication.

Sabbagha’s set design incorporated a mirrored floor, and the reflection this created was enhanced by clever lighting so that the dancers’ inverted, doubled shadows fell on the back wall. At first, Masilo’s writhing, sexualised body and smiling face were set against Mlangeni’s stern movements and expression; later in the piece, this would be reversed. The doubling effect was enhanced by the female dancers’ matching shaved heads and the white dresses they wore, while their bodies acted as similarly charged magnets would – alternately attracting and repelling each other. They danced to the lively music of Vivaldi, with frenetic movements conveying the near-simultaneous exaltation and angst of turbulent relationships.

The following week saw Julia Raynham’s 21st Century Animal, a symbolically complex multi-media work carrying the subtitle, “Afrofuturism on the edge of order”. In this production, “Afrofuturism” seemed to signify an exploration of the tensions between tradition and modernity in a (South) African context. The introductory dances of Mpho Masilela and Mduduzi Nyembe were set against an imposing background: the large-scale projection of recorded footage showing the dancers amidst day- and night-time cityscapes. Later, they appeared as urban dandies in gold trousers, strutting their stuff in a contest of wills and bodies, before fighting like combatants in a computer game.

The production gave a new meaning to the term “urban shaman” by depicting the incongruity of sangoma rituals and our commercial, shopping-mall world. This was exploited for its comic value, but at the same time the presence of masks, feathers, bells and talismanic objects had a powerful and even authoritative resonance. The free play of gender and sexual identities, which marked many productions at this year’s Umbrella, was present in 21st Century Animal – from Peet Pienaar’s graphic sequence, interchanging human and animal body parts on male and female outfits, to the high-heeled leather boots worn with a sangoma’s regalia (the sangoma him/herself seemed to be caught between an angry, frenzied dance and strangely coquettish movements).

The show ended with an ambivalent scene in which a street sweeper, against hazy monochrome footage of the Cape Town city bowl, declared unconvincingly, “I’ll fly ...”. For some reason I couldn’t get Rousseau’s famous line out of my head: “Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains.”

There were two thought-provoking productions at The Dance Factory in Newtown. Correspondances was a collaborative effort by South Africa’s Nelisiwe Xaba and Kettly Noël from Mali. If 21st Century Animal was concerned with Afrofuturism, Correspondances was, in many ways, an exercise in Afrofeminism. It was not polemical, but negotiated the connections between, for instance, brand-conscious forms of feminised consumerism and the ever-dominant male gaze (“if a man looks at me, there must be something for him to see”). Likewise, Noël’s bilingual recitation of a speech-poem was somewhere between righteous indignation and mock-fury; she burped while stridently affirming that she was “sensual” and “sexy”. Nevertheless, the central statement of the piece, “Ne ramenez pas” (Don’t go backwards) became a kind of pan-African feminist slogan.

In one moment, the dancers would be ditzy or demure or unsure of themselves, and in the next, they would be sultry and confident and brash. There were awkward sexual encounters that became violent clashes. The exaggerated portrayal of two individuals “butting into each other” also carried trans-national undertones; throughout, the interaction between Xaba and Noël foregrounded the act of translation between English and French. Given the xenophobic attitudes of many South Africans towards those from other African countries, Correspondances offered a timely intervention. The final scene, in which the dancers doused themselves with milk, created a stark, visceral tableau.

Sello Pesa’s Totems emphasised the “African Babel” in a different way, insisting on a heterogeneity of voices in various languages (from Sotho to German) that seemed to indicate a clash of identities. This production, commissioned by the Umbrella and performed by Ntsoana Contemporary Dance Theatre, bordered at times on the deliberately obscure but there were interesting motifs running through it, such as the painful but archetypal rites of pregnancy, birth and child-rearing. The show began with an all-smiling township song-and-dance stage routine, but the smiles dropped off the performers’ faces as they began to explore the “totems” of the title: objects, animals and mini-narratives representing individual and group identities.